My Thoughts on "The Voice" Season 3 (episode 1)

The 3rd season of TVB's "The Voice (超級巨聲)" started airing this past weekend (in the U.S. at least) and even though I had said that I most likely won't watch the 3rd season because of all the frustrations I had with the 2nd season, curiosity definitely got the better of me and I ended up tuning in for the premiere show.

For what it's worth, here are my thoughts regarding the first episode:

.> I definitely like the theme song for season 2 better -- the tune and lyrics were alot more catchy and the song overall was more memorable (I still remember the "Make me a Superstar" chorus even now!) The new themesong sounds a bit weird to me....who knows though -- it may end up growing on me later on? We'll see....

.> The 2 hosts (Sammy Leung and Krystal Tin -- the same hosts as last year) were still as annoying as ever in terms of talking too much. As I said last year, I really don't want to hear so much from the hosts, especially since their role in this instance is to facilitate and the 'meat' of the show is really the singing and the judging -- too much time is wasted with the hosts' nonsensical banter and crude jokes. Again, like I said last year -- I would much rather TVB cut out the banter from the hosts and include more of the feedback / commentary from the judges regarding the contestants' performances.

.> So far, the 'quality' of the contestants this season is nowhere near that of Season 1 and 2....in fact, I have to honestly say that almost every contestant's singing made me cringe, except for 2 or 3 who actually sang quite well -- considering how many people auditioned and how few people actually made it into the final, that's not a very good number at all. Come on TVB -- don't tell me that the 18 people you guys picked as finalists were the 'cream of the crop' because they are nowhere close (but then again, it IS TVB -- a company that doesn't know how to recognize talent if it's staring them in the face)...go figure!

.> According to the hosts, there were 4000 people who auditioned and out of that, 18 people were picked as finalists for the show. Hmmm.....makes me wonder what the "criteria" is for determining the finalists....I would dare to say that 90% of the finalists (the 18 chosen ones) are from outside of HK and aren't fluent in Cantonese or Mandarin (actually, to be honest, the percentage is probably closer to 99%). After listening to the first round of singing, I pretty much came to the conclusion that most of the contestants have bad Chinese pronunciation. It's really hard for me to believe that out of 4000 people, they had to pick 18 who didn't speak Chinese....um, were there no native Chinese speakers who auditioned? Or did their singing really suck that badly? Call me biased, but I just feel that if you are going to participate in a Chinese language singing competition, you should at least know Chinese....is that too much to ask?

.> Surprisingly, I'm actually satisfied with the judging on this first episode (those of you who have been following my posts on the previous season of The Voice will know exactly why I say "surprisingly"). The judges were pretty tight with their scoring this time around and their scores were appropriate to the performances for the most part....I'm hoping that it stays this way for the rest of the season (though I highly doubt it)....

.> The addition of Coco Lee and Jun Kang to the judging panel is definitely refreshing and gives a whole different perspective on the performances (especially considering the other judges were all the same as last season). Unfortunately though, I don't think they will be on the judging panel permanently....I read somewhere that Coco and Jun are only going to be guest judge for a few episodes....that sucks!

The above is just my initial reaction after watching the first episode....I may have more thoughts later on as I watch additional episodes (though I probably won't blog about every episode because I just don't have the patience or time for that....)